


I love you, I do

by mintsaway



Category: DRAMAtical Murder
Genre: Aromantic Character, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, kind of one sided mizusei, tae and aoba don't make explicit appearences they're just mentioned a lot, who knows - Freeform, will i ever stop projecting my emotions onto sei?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 16:34:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1825102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintsaway/pseuds/mintsaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And darling I wish more than anything that I was in love with you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I love you, I do

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so, I know second person pov is kind of unusual but I just felt it would work best for this fic. I've been really emotionally frustrated lately, and in case you didn't know I tend to project myself and my feelings onto Sei a lot. This was really hard for me to write because for those who don't experience this, it fucking sucks to not be able to label any of your emotions, and it sucks even more to put it into words. Anyway, this piece is really important to me, and is very close to my heart, so I hope you like it.

Don’t fall in love with your straight best friend. That’s the first rule they tell you in high school. Well, you suppose that hadn’t been too hard. You didn’t have any friends in high school to fall in love with, straight or otherwise. Hell, you barely went to high school! They might not tell anyone that; you don’t know. You were never at school long enough to make any friends, always in the hospital for something. When you did go to school, everyone looked at you with that look of pity on their face, the look reserved for disabled children and sick animals. Whenever you talked to them you could hear their voice change. It was always the same; they’d suddenly sound cautious. Their voice would get a bit softer, a bit slower, as if they were trying to calm down a child. You hated it. You hated it so much. You weren’t a doll; you were a human being, and you wish they would’ve treated you like one.

So you didn’t have friends in high school. Well, maybe you had one, your brother. He was the only one who didn’t look at you with that unbearable expression of pity. Sometimes you hung out with him and his friends, but most of the time it was just you. His friends were nice enough, or so you assumed. They were very polite (a stark contrast from your blue haired brother), and maybe it was wrong to say your brother was the only one who didn’t look at you with pity. They didn’t either really. But that was different somehow. You couldn’t see anything in their eyes when they looked at you; it was almost as if they were completely empty inside. You’d always been very good at reading people through their eyes, and you could always see something in the speckled iris of another person. But not these two. They smiled a lot, but it never reached their eyes. Nothing ever reached their eyes. Sometimes you wonder if your brother noticed this. You think he did, maybe it just didn’t matter to him. After all, not many things did matter to him then.

You didn’t see him often; he was never home. Sometimes he’d stay out for days at a time, and there were a few times where he’d stayed out for a week without even answering your grandmothers calls. At some point she stopped calling.

* * *

It was no surprise when he flunked out of high school, not matter how sad it made you. He went to class about as often as you, but he had no excuse not to show up. He never did his work. He didn’t even show up for half his exams. So you weren’t surprised, and neither was your grandmother really. You’d both expected this, even if only subconsciously.

In your last year, soon after he’d left, your health started getting even worse. You’d missed too much school already, and your grandmother, no matter how well her herbal remedies sold, was not made of money. And you were scared. Your brother was unemployed, not that he was home much anyway. Your grandmother made enough to get you all by comfortably, but she was getting older, and your hospital bills were piling up more and more as time went on. Towards the end of the year, the school told you you couldn’t graduate that year with your attendance record. Soon after you decided to quit. Your grandmother had been angry with both of you but she didn’t try to force either of you back into school. Your brother came home when he heard you’d dropped out. He stopped getting into fights and staying out for days. He’d always had a bit of a soft spot for you (as much of a soft spot as he could have anyway) and it seemed particularly active when you were in danger/hurt, or sometimes even inconvenienced. It was like he changed completely.

You both managed to find jobs before the money ran out, albeit not good ones. But jobs were jobs, especially for a pair of dropouts without so much as a high school diploma to their names. Your brother didn’t spend as much time with the empty eyed men, as you’d taken to calling them over the years, after he got a job. (He worked at a local junkshop). You heard about them sometimes; it seemed they’d been brought elsewhere for work for a short while. From what you could hear, they’d changed a great deal as well, but you were sure it was simply topical.

You put most of your energy now into your job. You’re a bartender at a hole in the wall place called the Black Needle that also services as a tattoo parlor during the day. It’s run by a man with shaggy dark wine colored hair that hangs down into his eyes a bit. Apparently he’d been a friend of your brother’s for a while. Strange, you think. You didn’t know your brother had any friends besides the empty eyed men, though you suppose it doesn’t matter much now.

You explain your health situation to him when you get the job, expecting another look of pity. Instead, he smiles and tells you it’s all right. You feel something stir deep inside you at the way his lips curve in the best way you can imagine, but you push it down as quickly as it comes. You don’t have time for things like that, whatever it was, not now.

A few weeks later you find yourself working the last shift before closing with him. You’re just finishing putting up the chairs on all the tables now, and it’s just you and him. The other two who were working clocked out about fifteen minutes ago, under assurance that the two of you would be okay. Once the last chair is up, you see him finish cleaning up the bar, and for a few moments you just stand in silence and watch each other. Then he flashes that smile that makes you melt on sight and chuckles to himself a bit. “How’d you like a drink?” He asks in a quiet sort of way, and you tilt your head a bit in confusion.

“Didn’t you just finish cleaning up the bar?” You ask, mimicking his quiet tone. He only smiles again.

“At my place.” He clarifies, then, upon seeing the slightly uncomfortable look on your face, he adds, “Just a drink, nothing else.” That puts you at ease, and you nod, because that sounds nice. It sounds nicer than going home for some reason, and you wonder vaguely if that’s how your brother justified being away for so long.

Just as he says, all you do is have a drink and talk. It’s clear he has a much higher alcohol tolerance than you do, but you aren’t drunk. No, you only have one drink after all. You don’t know how many he has, but it doesn’t matter much, because he’s not drunk either, that much you know at least.

“Mizuki.” You whisper, and he shifts his gaze from the wall to your eyes.

“Sei?” He asks, also in a whisper, prompting you to go on. But you don’t say anything else, because you didn’t have anything in your mind to say. Even though you don’t say anything, he smiles and nods like you have. He understands. At some point it crosses your mind that your grandmother will be angry that you stayed out all night without calling her, but you shrug it off. You’re an adult; it’ll be fine.

You don’t know why or when, but somehow you fall into a routine with Mizuki. You’ve gotten used to working the last shift (or last few depending on the staffing possibilities), and Mizuki likes the peace of mind that comes with closing himself. Every night you two go back to his apartment together, have a drink or two, and just talk. Before you know it, you’re friends, maybe best friends. You’re not sure; you’ve never been good at sorting out your emotions.

Some nights you don’t say anything at all, just sit and enjoy each other’s company. Some nights you can’t seem to say enough, and you’re not sure which nights you prefer. Maybe you don’t prefer either. Maybe you’re simply content with his presence, weather you talk or not is irrelevant. You wish you hadn’t come up with that in some ways, because you’re not sure how it should make you feel, or how it does make you feel.

“Sei.” He whispers, not because he has something to say, merely as reassurance that you’re still there. It’s not an uncommon thing between the two of you.

“Mizuki.” You whisper back. Your bodies are both facing the wall, but your heads are turned towards each other, eyes locked together in unwavering motion.

Before you can register what’s going on, you feel something warm against your lips, and realize slowly that he’s kissing you. You feel something in you drop and something else jump and your whole body feels like it’s on fire. You pull away, confused more about why you’re reacting this way than what you’re reacting to. He looks more surprised than you feel, and you realize that he may be just as confused as you. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—” But he cuts himself off, instead opting to simply look down at his lap.

You sit in silence next to him, trying to process how you feel. You’ve always hated thinking about your feelings, because you have never quite been able to distinguish any of your emotions. You feel like you’re trembling, but when you look at yourself, you’re completely still. Every nerve ending in your body is in overdrive; you can feel your clothes, the cloth alien against your skin. You can feel the couch against your back, and the pressure strikes you as odd. You can feel him next to you even though you’re not touching, but at the same time, your whole body is numb. Maybe that’s why every sensation feels foreign. You feel hot in your skin, like your true body is made of fire, and your skin is only what contains you in this world. Your head feels hazy, and you can’t think straight. None of your thoughts make sense. It’s almost as though your mind is covered in a thick fog that you just can’t see through.

You try to sort out your emotions, but you can’t even form a coherent thought through the haze in your mind. Somewhere far off you think you hear him say something, and that snaps you out of your trance-like state. You hear a soft sigh of relief from him when you come back into reality. You smile weakly at him, and he smiles back, but just like the empty eyed men, it doesn’t reach his eyes.

When you get home, you can’t sleep. You lie awake, trying to figure out your mess of emotions. You can’t keep ignoring them, not now. It’s important this time. You think about Mizuki, and that thing stirs deep inside you. You’ve been trying to figure out what that is, but you just can’t. You don’t know. You feel different when you think about him, strange, but you just can’t put a name to it. And it makes you want to scream, or cry, or both. Why can’t you feel things the way everyone else feels them? Why can’t you be normal? Everyone always talks about how being unique is good, but they’re wrong. Being different is awful, and you’d give anything to be just like everyone else.

The next day, both of you pretend the incident never happened. It’s a surprisingly slow night, but you don’t talk much. Tonight it’s enough to just draw comfort from the other one in silence. You still go to his apartment with him after the bar closes, and you don’t talk much there either. But you know you’re both okay. Whatever happened the night before can be forgotten, and you don’t know if you draw more comfort from that thought, or from Mizuki in the dark of his apartment.

Everything is fine for a while after that, and you think you might actually be getting closer to Mizuki. Of course even you know everything can’t just be fine forever, and at night you can’t help but dread the thing that will surely ruin everything for you, for him. You don’t have to dread too long, because it comes faster than you would have ever imagined.

It happens while you’re closing the bar one night. You go over to the bar to the bar to meet Mizuki once you finish with the chairs, and he’s, unsurprisingly, already finished. He always offers to help you but you refuse every time. And maybe he understands how important it is to you that you do it on your own, because he backs off every time. He smiles at you like he does every night, and you would never expect this to be the night your world crashes down around you again.

When you reach him you both stop for a moment, as though the universe were paused, and it took you with it. Then, before either of you know what’s going on, his hand is resting against your cheek, and his lips are on yours. Then, before your brain even has time to register what’s happened, it’s over. However, his hand stays on your cheek, holding your head in place. He stares at you. You stare back, and almost without you noticing, an unspoken agreement passes between you.

When you reach his apartment you sit side by side on the old couch just like always, but neither of you make any move to retrieve drinks. Instead you stare quietly into each other’s eyes, trying to figure out how the other is feeling. You don’t know who starts it, but suddenly you’re kissing, and you notice you’re sitting a bit closer than normal.

It’s selfish and you know it, but for some reason you don’t want to stop. You still don’t know how you feel about Mizuki, but you know this isn’t it. This isn’t how you feel, but you don’t want to stop. It’s warm and it’s safe and it’s everything you crave and you never want it to end. It’s unfair to Mizuki to keep this going, and it tears you apart inside, it does. But you don’t stop. You can’t stop. This touch, this feeling is what you’ve been searching for, what you’ve been craving for as long as you can remember, and selfish as it may be, you’re not about to give it up. So you let it continue as far as it will go, and you wake up in the morning still in his tiny apartment and you look at him, lying still in the small bed next to you.

Suddenly your skin feels too small again, and you feel like your body is boiling beneath the constriction of it. Your brain feels like it’s shutting down. You can’t think; you can barely see. Your whole body is going up in flames, but you can’t feel a thing. Your skin is numb to sensations around it; the only thing you register there is unbearable heat. Your muscles feel like they’re being ripped apart slowly, your bones ache almost like they’re being bent but refuse to break. The world is spinning around you and you can’t breath. You can’t think. You can’t see. You don’t know if there’s anything going on around you to hear, but you if there is you can’t hear it. What’s going on? You want to think, but you can’t.

Then as suddenly as it starts, it ends. You’re left sitting up in the bed, trembling and disoriented. You can feel Mizuki holding you and you can hear him trying to calm you down. You force your body to relax in his arms so he knows you’re okay now. You can feel some sort of emotion swell up inside you, and you try to crush it down. You can’t think about emotions right now. You just can’t. It’s too draining, to stressful, and invokes too much self-loathing than you can deal with right now, especially here in front of Mizuki. But you can’t crush it completely, and it doesn’t take long for you to give up. What can you do? Weather you like it or not, emotions are meant to be felt, and you don’t have a choice this time.

You feel Mizuki lay a comforting kiss on the side of your head and hold you closer. “Sei.” He whispers into your hair. ‘Mizuki.’ You try to say, but nothing comes out. So you just nod and lean your head against his chest. You know he understands; he always understands. You stay like that for a long time before you finally stand and mutter a lame excuse about worrying your grandmother and leave.

You don’t want to leave. You want to stay in his arms forever, but it’s just not fair to him. You can’t keep being selfish like this, because you couldn’t stand it if you hurt him any more. But you still don’t want to go home, so you wander around for a while. You consider going to see your brother, he’s probably working right now, but you think better of it.

You don’t know how long you wander, but when you finally decide to go home, it’s early evening. You have to go to work in a few hours. When you get home you say hello to your grandmother, clarify that you were just with Mizuki (which technically isn’t a lie), and go up to your room. You might as well get some sleep before tonight’s shift.

Work goes the way it always goes, loud and drunk, but what else would you expect? The previous night is ignored, and maybe that’s best. You don’t think you’d be able to deal with talking about it. You still go back to Mizuki’s apartment afterwards, and everything is silent for a while. You know this silence is just the calm before the storm, and maybe it affects you more than you think, because without noticing you down three drinks. And maybe Mizuki realizes this too, because he’s almost out of alcohol.

You take a deep breath and close your eyes. It’ll be fine. What’s the worst that could happen? You turn to face Mizuki, and he’s already looking at you. He shifts his gaze up and down you before locking his eyes with yours. He leans forward a bit, and you find yourself moving to meet him.

Your lips meet softly, but it doesn’t last long before he pulls away. He shakes his head minutely and mutters something to himself. He looks you directly in the eyes, and you swear you can hear his heart speed up.

“I’m in love with you.” He whispers seriously, and it feels like your heart stops beating. Your chest constricts and your breath stops short. Your head is spinning but at the same time it’s still as a graveyard.

You want to say something, but you don’t know what to say to him. You still don’t have your feelings sorted out, and you have the awful feeling you never will. You force yourself not to look away from his eyes, and that in and of itself almost takes all of your focus. You want to scream. You want to cry. You can feel your insides ripping themselves apart, and it’s killing you. You love him; you really do. But not the way he loves you, not the way you want to love him.

**Author's Note:**

> Note: If you didn't pick up on this during the fic, Sei is on the aromantic spectrum


End file.
